Plenty of blame to go around

California officials have repeatedly failed in their legal duty to oversee group home operations in San Joaquin County, so much so that county officials are being urged to essentially take it over.

California officials have repeatedly failed in their legal duty to oversee group home operations in San Joaquin County, so much so that county officials are being urged to essentially take it over.

That's the essence of a blistering 23-page grand jury report issued last week. There is enough blame to go around, from home operators to county officials, but true damnation falls on state officials.

As noted in the jurors' report, only after they started asking questions did state inspectors suddenly show up at group homes here, some of which hadn't been inspected for four years. And when they did, even though some inspections lasted as little as 15 minutes, officials found 34 violations over the one month in which inspections were conducted. In the prior three years, state inspectors issued only 30 violations.

State officials cite budget cuts, and indeed there have been some. But of the 34 citations issued during inspections conducted between Feb. 21 and March 20, eight were so-called Type A, "which would create, if not corrected, an immediate risk to the health, safety or personal rights of at-risk youth."

Clearly, budget constraints must take a backseat to making sure children placed in such facilities by the government are protected by that government. When state officials did inspect, jurors reported, they repeatedly failed to communicate their findings to the county agencies responsible for placing children in the group homes. And as it turns out, county officials have no control over the operation of the homes. Licensing, background checks of employees and adherence to operating requirements all are the sole providence of the state.

Appallingly, state officials even used budget constraints for refusing to appear before the grand jury.

Others did, although from the grand jury report it is impossible to say exactly who or how many. The report only spells out that officials from some agencies testified as did some group home workers, former workers and managers. Even what seems to be ample documentation received by jurors is kept out of the public view.

That information would be helpful so the public knows who said what and what official documents say. Even though jurors said that there are many group home operators who provide the at-risk children with a good, safe and supportive environment, others, they said, "appear to be in the business only to make money."

Unfortunately, such a scathing report and the attendant anonymity tend to paint all group homes with the same brush.

This is not the fault of the grand jury. It is in nature of the grand jury system that it operates in secret. In this case, the light of public scrutiny is imperative.

Most grand jury reports, frankly, are superficial and amateurish. This is neither. These jurors obviously took time to understand a complex problem and to ask questions until they got answers. The 19 recommendations they made are a tribute to their perseverance and a challenge to public officials now required to answer each one.

We hope those officials will not, as have officials so many times with so many other grand jury reports, treat this as just another irritating fly to be shooed away.

"We cannot," as the jurors said in concluding their report, "turn our backs on the most vulnerable youth of our community. As a society, we have an obligation to make sure that they are provided a safe, healthy, healing living environment."